


Bridging the Gap

by vacantseats



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: A little hurt/comfort?, And a Little Bit of Non-Explicit Sex, Fluff, Just Lots and Lots of Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 18:42:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vacantseats/pseuds/vacantseats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So here they are. Pretending to be normal. Pretending that this is something they always do, rent a movie Friday night, make some popcorn and eat it before dinner, fuck on the couch because they’re too lazy to get up and move to the bedroom, maybe go to bed early so that they can wake up early the next morning and go for a run. Normal things that normal people do. That they’d like to do, sure. But Mako hates popcorn, and if they go to bed early he’ll probably just wake up in the middle of the night from another nightmare, so normal is a bit out of reach right now.</p><p>They can still rent the movie, at least.</p><p>Or, the one where Mako and Raleigh travel the world after they finish saving it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bridging the Gap

**Author's Note:**

> There's swearing and some non-explicit sex. And a lot of fluff. And a lot of Raleigh being ridiculously in love with everything about Mako Mori. There's some brief stuff with claustrophobia, but it's dealt with in a few sentences and not very graphic. This is also not edited, so I apologize for any grammatical errors! I'll try and get them out.

Four months after it’s all over, they rent a movie.

It’s so ridiculous to him that places like Blockbuster still exist (or rather, came back into existence around ten years after the war began. The movie industry had been an unexpected casualty of the kaiju attacks, but the simple fact of the matter was that there were no longer millions to waste on creating false realities. They were busy creating false warriors instead. So the industry had weaned and eventually fallen, with no billion-dollar corporations around to distribute the films worldwide, and rental stores like Blockbuster had been revived from the point of near-extinction. After all, people still wanted an escape, even if it was one that was familiar rather than fresh) even after everything that’s happened, but there it is, glowing sign in familiar navy blue and mustard yellow visible from the moment they turn onto the street.

They’re in Chicago of all places, right now. They’d stayed in Hong Kong for a few weeks, seen the Jaeger program to its very end, when the doors to the Shatterdome had finally shut for good. There had been interviews to do, debriefings to attend, and funerals to plan (There was an official memorial that was televised, for Stacker and Chuck. It had been a large affair, with officials from every government around the world present to salute their fallen heroes. The real memorial had happened two days earlier, in the Shatterdome’s mess hall with copious amounts of alcohol, and had only involved those who had worked on the project. This one was for all of the pilots, Sasha & Aleksis, the Wei brothers, even Yancy and all those before who had given their lives to this snowball’s chance in hell of a mission. For the scientists, as well, who’d had little regard for their own lives—especially in the beginning when so little had been known—when they’d done everything in their power to learn anything they could about the powerful and elusive beasts that were bringing about their reckoning. For the engineers, the builders, and God, there had been so many who had died as violently as any of the Jaeger pilots had—in freak accidents, trying to build the mammoth defenders of the earth, or from cancers caused by radiation exposure, killing themselves as they tried to save themselves without even knowing it. Mako knew even more of them than he did, and she told him what she knew of their stories softly at night, when she didn’t have to quite meet his eyes in the darkness). 

Then, it had all been over, and they’d been left with too much cash and too many ghosts for only two lifetimes. 

“What do you want to do?” he’d asked one day, sitting in a diner at 2 in the morning. They couldn’t go out to eat at regular times anymore. Their faces were plastered all over the news, already made into the fearless heroes the world wanted to see. 

She’d been silent for a long while, contemplating his question so as to give him a thoroughly honest answer.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing the world,” she murmured, finally. “From outside of Shatterdomes, this time.”

So here they are. Pretending to be normal. Pretending that this is something they always do, rent a movie Friday night, make some popcorn and eat it before dinner, fuck on the couch because they’re too lazy to get up and move to the bedroom, maybe go to bed early so that they can wake up early the next morning and go for a run. Normal things that normal people do. That they’d like to do, sure. But Mako hates popcorn, and if they go to bed early he’ll probably just wake up in the middle of the night from another nightmare, so normal is a bit out of reach right now.

They can still rent the movie, at least.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*

“How about this one?” Mako asks, holding out a plastic DVD case to him.

He flips it around to glance at the title.

“ _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_ , really?” he asks.

“Have you seen it?” she asks.

“No. Have you?”

She shakes her head, smiling a bit. “Looks interesting, though. And it's set in San Francisco. I've always wanted to see San Francisco.”

He leans in closer to her, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Is that where we’re headed next?” he asks. Chicago had been his choice, because he’d never been and she’d insisted he have first pick.

“Don’t think it’s quite rebuilt yet,” she points out a little too casually. “Maybe London?”

“We could meet the king,” he acknowledges, and she wrinkles her nose.

“I have no interest in meeting a man who wears an imaginary crown without having done anything to earn it,” she says softly in Japanese and he laughs, caught off guard. 

Her eyes dart around the store briefly, to make sure no one’s looking, and then she shrugs him off of her shoulder and sneaks a quick kiss.

He loves it when she does that. 

“What was that for?” he asks quietly, still grinning.

“I like your laugh,” she says, smiling back.

He stops and lets himself revel in the way that she is able to make him feel normal again, if only for a moment.

“I like you,” he says in Japanese, cringing inward at how fucking stupid it sounds. But it’s the truth, and Mako always appreciated hearing that above all else.

“I know,” she says, and snatches the movie back.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*

They go to London, then Berlin, then Vladivostok. 

Vladivostok was mostly leveled, but Mako visited the port town when she was younger, back when it had only suffered one kaiju attack and was ready to bounce back. Now all that remains is the wrecked hull of what clearly used to be a vibrant town.

They walk by the ocean while it rains, and Mako takes his hand in hers.

“Is it different than you remember?” he asks, even though he knows the answer.

She tilts her head and shrugs. “Mmm…different and the same.”

He laughs a little sardonically, then. “Dumb question. I mean, obviously it wasn’t decimated when you was here last.”

She shrugs. "It looks different, but feels the same. I don't know. I can't really explain..." 

He gets what she means though. He went back to Anchorage, after all, when everything with Yancy happened. There was an odd resilience in places like this.

It was inspirational, truth be told, to watch a city rebuild itself from ashes.

Mako squeezes his hand. And he leans towards her. "Different, but doing okay."

*_*_*_*_*_*_*

Newt insists on meeting up with them when they make their way back through Hong Kong (“Just to see,” Mako says when she tells him her latest choice, but they both know that it’s as close to Japan as she’s currently willing to get).

The city is in the early steps of rebuilding, so they have to get special passes to walk through the wreckage. 

He always feels guilty when he sees the debris, even though logically he knows that doesn’t make sense. They were saving lives, protecting the world from certain death and destruction, but it’s still tough seeing the actual effects of their battles. When you’re in a Jaeger, you’re too far removed to really comprehend the damage you’re doing.

Mako stops and stares at a street that hasn’t been repaved yet, takes in the ripped apart cement and cars twisted beyond recognition.

“That was us,” she says dully. “With the boat.”

He remembers then that this is the first time she’s seen the aftermath of a Jaeger battle she was involved in. The aftermath of her first battle, in fact.

“Yeah,” he says, because there’s no use in denying the obvious. “It was.”

They’re silent the rest of the way to Newt’s apartment. He’s staying in the middle of the wrecked city to work on his next project: a museum.

“What’s the first thing the people are going to want once everything gets up and running?” Newt asks while handing them both beers.

“Life insurance?” Raleigh guesses. Mako grins into her drink.

“What? No,” Newt shakes his head. “They’re going to want tangible proof of what they just went through. You know, they’re rebuilding the cities and repaving the roads, and it’s just…it’s like, erasing everything that’s happened, it’s just covering it all up, you know?”

“Makes it a bit easier to get around,” Raleigh says. He gets what Newt means, though.

“So my plan is to keep the proof, preserve it, and put it on display, so that people can stop by and see it. Remember that it happened.”

Mako takes a long swallow of beer, and then clears her throat. “That’s admirable, Newton.”

“Well, I uh, I mean, it’s only in it’s developing stages, but…really?” he looks up at her like a puppy looking for approval.

She nods, smiling earnestly at him. “What is going to be in the museum, exactly?”

“Well, so far, we’ve got lots of kaiju,” he leans in conspiratorially, “I managed to get my hands on all of Hannibal Chau’s remaining stash, so we’ve got brain matter, half-preserved skeletons, even part of an umbilical chord!”

Raleigh thinks it’s a bit morbid, saving pieces of the beasts that killed so many. If it were up to him he’d burn them all to the fucking ground.

“Then we’ve also got some pieces from some of the Jaegers…nothing from Gipsy Danger, obviously. Or Striker Eureka,” Newt looks down when he says that, averting his gaze while he takes a long swig of beer. “But we’ve got some cool stuff! I managed to get my hands on some Mark-1 drift equipment that’s pretty neat. And then I’ve got the drift machine I made, and we’re going to have huge video instillations of some of the Jaeger battles we had on file back at the Shatterdome.”

“How’d you get your hands on all of that?” Raleigh asks.

“You’d be surprised what people are willing to give for a first hand account of what it’s like to drift with a kaiju,” Newt says with a self-satisfied grin.

Mako nods, “We’ll have to visit when it is finished.”

“I’m hoping to get it up and running by this time next year,” he says. “Gotta pay the bills somehow. Hermann’s writing a book.”

“What about?” Raleigh asks, but Newt just shakes his head.

“Every time I ask, he just goes off on a tangent about the fibonacci sequence, and ‘I don’t expect it to be within your realm of understanding, Newton,’ so I’m not really sure.”

He pauses to get them all a second beer. “Hey! You two should write a book!”

Mako catches his eye from across the room and raises her eyebrows.

“No really!” Newt says. “You could call it, ‘Alone In the Drift,’ or ‘Drift Compatible’. C’mon it practically writes itself!” 

“We’ll think about it,” Raleigh says, still looking at Mako.

Later that night, she rolls over in bed and wraps herself around him from behind.

“Are you awake?”

He grins even though she can’t see it, “Always.”

They’re both quiet for a moment; reveling in the sounds of one another’s slow, steady breathing. 

“We should go back,” she says, mouth pressed to his neck.

“To Hong Kong?” 

“Mm-hm,” she nods against the back of his head. “See the museum.”

“Really?” he asks.

She’s silent, maybe considering her answer.

“Yes,” she says eventually.

“Okay,” he says.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*

They skip Japan this time around. They skip Australia too.

Raleigh decides he wants to go to Oregon, and even though Mako gives him her best ‘what the fuck?’ look when he says it at first, she goes along with it.

“What’s in Oregon?” she asks, still frowning.

“Dunno,” he tells her. “Never been.”

There’s a stretch of beach there, though, that’s been entirely untouched. They broke down part of the Wall there, so it’s readily accessible to civilians.

It’s packed when they go, and he’s shocked at the sheer number of people that show up on a relatively cold and grey day just to catch a glimpse of the shoreline.

It takes around fifteen minutes before someone recognizes them, which given the size of the crowd, is actually pretty decent. It’s a little boy who spots them, then tugs on his mother’s arm.

“Hey! Mom! Look, it’s Mako Mori!”

The blue hair is too much of a dead giveaway.

They try and take pictures with people, but eventually the crush of the crowd becomes too much. There are too many hands reaching for them, desperate just to touch the so-called saviors of the world.

He starts to get claustrophobic. It’s not something that happens often, but occasionally when he’s surrounded by lots of people, his hands will sweat and it will get harder to breathe. It never used to happen before Yancy died.

Mako notices almost immediately, and grabs his hands.

“Thank you all,” she says as clearly and loudly above the low din of the crowd as she can manage, “But we have to go.”

Somehow, she leads him through the crowd, shouldering men everyone out of the way to clear a path. There are still some people following them snapping pictures when they get back to their car, but she waves them off with a practiced smile and a courteous wave. He can barely take his eyes off the ground, focusing on his feet to try and steady his breathing.

Mako helps him into the passenger side of the car and rolls down the windows.

“Breathe,” she tells him quietly, rubbing circles on his shoulder with one hand, while she puts the car in drive with the other. More people are starting to follow them from the beach now, but Mako is a fast driver and pulls out of there quickly.

She drives well above the speed limit until she’s able to pull off onto a side road a little ways away from the beach, where it will be difficult for any reporters or well-intentioned fans to find them.

“Hey,” she says in Japanese, cupping his jaw gently with her hands and tilting his face to look at her. “Breathe.”

And he does.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*

They try Mexico after that, drive as far south in a beat-up rental car as they can manage.

He doesn’t like the heat, though, finds it almost impossible to do any sort of physical activity in.

Until it’s dark out, that is.

They like to go slow in bed, take their time. The first few times they had sex, it hadn’t really set in yet for either of them that they had the rest of their lives to do this if they wanted to. Since then, they’d learned to revel in the moment, make it last.

Mako moans something into his shoulder that he doesn’t quite catch, but just the sound of her voice is enough to almost send him over the edge.

“Fuck, Mako,” he sighs, pausing for a moment to look down at her. Her face is flushed, her eyes are closed. She’s so beautiful that sometimes he can hardly even believe that this is happening, the two of them. 

Her eyes open and she looks at him quizzically. “Teishi shinaide kudasai,” she gasps.

He listens.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*

One year after it’s all over they go to San Francisco.

It’s not back together, yet, but they don’t mind.

There’s a memorial there for a Mark-1 Jaeger that was destroyed off the coast at the start of the Kaiju War; Brawler Yukon. It was the first Jaeger to ever kill a kaiju. It was the first sign of hope.

The memorial is a smaller-scale version of Brawler Yukon, sculpted from bronze and what little metal they’d been able to salvage from the destroyed Jaeger.

They visit it early in the morning, before most people wake up.

Mako stares at it from a distance. “I thought the first Jaeger to kill a kaiju would be…bigger.”

He snorts and looks over at her in time to catch the small smile on her face.

“And less bronze?”

She shrugs, “Maybe a bit more colorful.”

This time he seeks out her hand and holds it.

“So,” he says, leaning back to take in the full memorial. “Do you think we could pilot it?”

She mock-scrutinizes it, her expression serious. “Only if Newt lends us his garbage drift.”

“Really? You think that’s all we’d need to pilot a giant hunk of scrap metal?” he asks, smiling.

“Of course,” she says. “I bet we could pilot anything now.”

She says it unthinkingly, but the weight of it hits him as he realizes that she’s right. He’s never felt this in-synch with anyone before. She knows him inside and out, and it’s not just because she’s been inside his head.

“Hey,” he says softly. “I love you.”

“I know,” she smiles, and lets him drop his head onto her shoulder while they watch the sun rise.


End file.
